Cold Fusion Video Reviews

aka Microscopic Boy

• Directed by Bruce McCarthy (and David DeCoteau, uncredited)
• Written by Benjamin Grant (and Matthew Jason Walsh, uncredited)
• Starring
  • Chad Gordon
  • Lauren Petty
  • Samuel Elliott
  • Jessica Taylor
  • Debra Mayer
• Produced by Kirk Edward Hansen
• Executive produced by Peter Locke and Donald Kushner

Despite being pretty damned unentertaining, this movie does fulfill a vital function in film studies: it provides the answer to the nagging question, “Just how bad does a movie have to be before Dave DeCoteau pulls out?” DeCoteau was the original director, and left after four days of shooting over unstated “creative differences”; McCarthy, the credited director, finished up and proudly let his name be attached to this piece of cinematic flotsam.

Josh (Chad Gordon) is a high school senior with a problem: He’s 5′3″. (And?) (And what?) (And what’s his problem?) (That’s his problem. He’s short.) (So?) (So that’s his problem, and he’s all twisted in knots about it.) (He’s pissed because he’s only 5′3″.) (That’s about the size of it. So to speak.) I guess I can see where he’s coming from. After all, he attends the ultimate whitebread high school, with no Asian kids or anyone else who might be of less than towering stature; no, this being at least originally a DeCoteau flick, his classmates are all lean, beautiful people. Why, how can he face the day when he can’t measure up to the perfection on display around him?

I’m not alone in my lack of empathy; even Josh’s best friend Rudy (Kyle Chaos) wants to file Josh’s pitiful trial under “Get over it.” On the other hand, Rudy is a towering beanpole, with a pompadour adding at least three inches to his height, so it’s not surprising that Rudy’s words don’t hold much weight with Josh.

That’s Josh on the left. He’s short. I feel I have to spell this out for you, because…

But what really brings Josh’s diffuse dilemma into focus is that he’s pining for Courtney the cheerleader (Lauren Petty), whose boyfriend, Blake the studly football player (Samuel Elliott), regularly torments Josh in company with two equally tall compatriots. Again, it’s only because they’re all students at Perfectly Caucasian High that these bullies even notice Josh; they apparently can’t find any fat kids or paraplegics or immigrants to tease.

On the particular day in question, the bullying involves messing with Josh’s and Rudy’s science fair project, a scale model of the Nautilus, complete with functioning air pressure, engines, and cockpit controls. I bolded that lest you somehow overlook details which just might prove important in the plot to follow. Maybe. Not that I’m trying to spoil the suspense or anything. Anyway, Blake’s attention leaves the Nautilus broken, and as Josh is picking it up, who should come over but Courtney herself! She acts like a decent human being, she apologizes for Blake, and she recognizes the Nautilus because Jules Verne is her favorite author! Ouch. I know this movie is about fantastic and unlikely events, but couldn’t they wait until the shrinking starts before inflicting so much damage on my willing suspension of disbelief? She also invites him to a party she’s throwing at The Water Den, a local under-21 club, that night.

Far from being ecstatic, Josh is even more miserable than before – because he can go to the party, but he’ll still be short! Oh, the humanity! (And let’s face it, the movie’s not even doing a good job of convincing us that he’s really that short in comparison to his classmates. Heck, Courtney herself stands evenly against him, and she’s wearing heels.) Rudy tries to cheer him up, and even buys a couple of cell phones from an electronics sale, so they can pretend to be bigshots at the party. (Because, waaaay back in 1999, having a cell phone at Perfectly Caucasian High meant that you were talking to record producers or somebody like that. Whereas at other high schools, it might mean you’re a drug dealer.) And yes, I bolded that just so that you wouldn’t overlook another essential detail.

In a desperate effort to help Josh, then, Rudy recommends they visit Crazy Molly (Jessica Taylor) a sci-fi-obsessed hacker chick who got kicked out of school last year for computer no-no’s. Rudy’s plan? Oh, to get Molly to crack some secret government computer or something and find some way for Josh to grow three inches in the next couple of hours. Uh huh. So Molly makes use of this mysterious and wondrous computer network known as “the internet,” and applies her hacker skillz to entering their query in a “search engine.” Boy, I’m glad they came to the right place for such technical know-how. She does, after all, wear bizarre goggles while doing all this, so she must be really plugged in. The first result for her search brings her to “Miss Things Pharmaceuticals,” a “restricted” website which she soon hacks into. And there, displayed on the main menu, is “Growth Alteration Formula.” And not only does it give a full chemical formula, but it even helpfully lists what common household products contain the necessary ingredients. Why, the boys’ll be able to whip this up at home! How convenient!

A turkey baster, young man, is no substitute for test tubes when SCIENCE is being performed.

All of which, however, attracts the attention of nefarious forces – to wit, Dr. Krackle (Debra Mayer in Peg Bundy’s wig). To say that Mayer chews the scenery here isn’t quite accurate; rather, she rends it with unbridled ferocity between her bleached dentition. Everyone else is performing in a light-hearted sci-fi comedy, but Mayer moves in a pocket universe of over-the-top parody. The effect is more than a little bizarre.

Anyway, her goons, Olaf (Tyler Anderson) and Mr. Bionic (George Cost), inform her that someone has accessed “their mainframe” and downloaded her secret formula. Because, you know, there’s really little difference between hiding proprietary data on a protected mainframe and posting it on a search-indexable website with a button clearly marked “Growth Alteration Formula.” Instead of flaying her IT guy, Krackle sends the goons out to find the intruder and make sure that whoever uses the formula never lives to tell the tale, because this is the formula with which she plans to conquer the world!

By this time, though, Josh and Rudy have whipped up a batch out of a bunch of kitchen ingredients (from the looks of things, Twinkies are involved), and try it out. This stuff is meant to be sprayed, so while Rudy pours it into a spray bottle, Josh runs upstairs and… puts on a naval dress uniform. Why? Well, he says that it’s his dad’s and he wants to have something bigger on when the growth spurt hits. And hey, the party at The Water Den is nautically-themed, so he’ll be dressed for the occasion. Also, he’s decided to give the Nautilus model to Courtney as a gift, so he just happens to be holding it in his hand when Rudy sprays him down. You know the drill by now, right?

Yes, there are posters for both Kraa! The Sea Monster and Doctor Mordrid in the background. Yes, they are both better movies than this one.

You’ll notice that a substantial amount of time has passed, and there is as yet no size-changing in this movie. And there’s not going to be for a while, either, since the formula does absolutely bugger-all. Dejected, Josh and Rudy go to the party anyway, where Blake’s cronies are shaking down attendees for an admission fee. Josh receives an unintended slight from Courtney, gets punch thrown in his face by Blake, and ends up in the bathroom about ready to burst into tears. (It takes much less time to tell it than to watch it; with all the shots of teens gyrating, that’s like a fifteen-minute chunk of the movie right there.) And finally…

Josh’s body starts breaking out in weird bubbles, there’s a flash of light, and he finds himself almost microscopic in size. (Thus the title.) Oh, the irony – they assumed that “growth alteration formula” would make him bigger! Well, it’s not quite irony, it’s more like intentionally misleading labeling. Heck, it’s not even specifically growth alteration, as that would imply that it affects only living things. No, the navel uniform shrinks with him (and still doesn’t fit), and the Nautilus shrinks somewhat less, so that he’s the perfect size to climb inside and operate the controls when threatened by an ant. Boy, it’s a good thing he designed it with functioning controls and whatnot.

He then calls Rudy on his cell phone (boy, it’s a good thing they picked up those cell phones) to come and rescue him. One of the convenient things about having your protagonist shrink down to microscopic size is that you don’t actually have to make props or insert special effects; he’s supposed to be too small to see, after all! So when Rudy scoops the Nautilus up in a contact lens case, well, we just take his word for it, okay?

But Rudy doesn’t put the cover on the case, mainly because the hare-brained plot requires it, and there are assorted hijinx as Josh ends up first in Blake’s drink, and then in his throat. And then…

Quick — epiglottis or duodenum?

Good golly, I’m bored. Bored bored bored. I was bored watching this movie, I’m bored recounting it, and you’re probably bored reading about it. (But not bored enough to click to another review, okay?) Let’s see if I can fast-forward:

Dr. Krackle and the goons track Crazy Molly and, through the threat of forcing her to watch old sitcom marathons like One Day at a Time, find out who has the formula and where they are. So the goons crash the party, use their detecto-probes to find out that Josh is by now in the fishtank ( boy, it’s double good that he’s got a working submarine with him), and grab Courtney. Why? Friend, we are far beyond the point at which it is reasonable to expect a rational motivation for anything that happens in this movie. Especially when Dr. Krackle has Courtney join her in her own laser-armed submarine, to shrink down and attack Josh in the fishtank. Because, you know, that’s a much better idea than just letting Josh’s oxygen run out.

What follows is naturally reminiscent of the climactic sequence of Innerspace, if that movie had been rendered with ultra-cheap FX. Josh gets the girl, the party rocks on, and Blake ends up accidentally shrunk himself. The end.

You ever have one of those dreams where you’re watching a movie (or better yet, inside a movie), but the plot meanders and never makes any sense? A couple of times while watching this, I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t asleep. The whole plot is based on such an unlikely string of contrivances that suspension of disbelief never had a chance, even before the shrinking element was finally introduced. I mean, what if this had happened to a short guy whose science-fair project had been one of those vinegar-and-baking-soda volcanoes? Tough luck, I guess.

“Josh, could you have gotten coughed into the fishtank at a slightly less lame party?”

The real culprit here is that somebody decided to make a movie around an FX-heavy concept, and then because of budgetary restrictions, tried to limit the actual use of that concept as much as possible. That’s why Josh doesn’t shrink until waaaay too long into the movie, and his minuscule adventures are as boring and easily-staged as possible. (Hey, let’s have the micro boy stay inside a submarine cockpit instead of interacting with his outsized environment!) Bad idea got stacked on top of bad idea until the final version seems less like a finished movie and more like a horrible, horrible mistake.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 0
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 6
• ominous thunderstorms: 1
• former Power Rangers: 1 (Rhett Fisher, one of Blake’s cronies)
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0